So I’ve got a couple of things I want to talk about. I’m going to do — not really like, a plug-in thing or anything, but just like, I want to talk about detail work when it comes to mixing vocals.

I get a lot of questions about how I get vocals to sound so slick, and it’s not so much the compression stuff. It’s more just like, the prep and like, just the spec work that goes into cleaning things.

And then I’ve got a new sample company I want you guys to check out. I’m going to kind of talk about the new website, and I’m rebranding some stuff here with the channel.

So anyways, I have a track. It’s a pop thing. I’m going to show you just some automation things. It’s nothing really crazy, but it makes a big difference I think, and I think it may help you guys out too.

So I’m going to play a little bit of this bridge. Listen to the lead vocal and then I’ll sort of break down what I’m talking about. So here we go.

[mix]

Alright. So big huge pop vocal thing.

So a lot of people ask how I get vocals to sound so slammed and so up front. Everybody sort of knows the whole compression trick. 4:1 and then you pretty much just peg the meter, right?

[vocals]

And that’s cool, and some people run their attack and releases wide open, or a little more in kind of like how I have it. Just depends on how they hear things.

But the thing is that once you hit the compressor that hard, it brings up a lot of shit in the track, and you have to clean that down. So a lot of it is like hard sounding consonants like d’s, g’s, t’s… Anything that gets real clicky.

Then also the breaths come up when it gets really distracting. So like here, I’ve got a breath.

[vocals]

Now, if you notice, I have it clip gained down like, -13 dB which is what you do to fix that.

[vocals]

Even when I play it in the track, it gets super distracting.

[mix with breath loud]

But if I bring it back down…

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[mix with breath down]

So that’s the breath thing. The other thing is if you listen to the G, it gets real clicky on the front of this note.

[mix]

Right?

Then there’s a bunch of them throughout this song, and again, this is nothing incredibly ground breaking, but it makes a huge difference.

[mix]

So that’s a big deal. And if you notice on these doubles, I’ve also trimmed these down as well. Like these g’s. On the breath not so much. I just sort of listen to it and if I feel like I need to do something — like on this one, I pulled all of these down.

So that’s just something to think about. And you know, if you look at the vocal on this track, I’ve literally gone in and cut stuff out and clip gained — all of these slices are like d’s and g’s and clicky sounds. Just anything that the compression will annihilate and kind of bring up that’s nasty. I go back and fix it.

So it’s not just throwing a compressor on and slamming it to hell and you’re done.

So something — if you’ve never thought about that, check it out. I think it’ll make a huge difference.

Other things I wanted to talk about. Woodshedaudio.co. I started this with a buddy of mine. It’s a sample and loop library. We’ve got a bunch of different products. Hi-hat, cymbals, we’ve got a vintage vinyl thing, which is like an old school drum machine I worked with. There’s a pop pack. Shaker and tambourines are super popular.

It’s loops, it’s one shots, it’s multi-layered, so you get multi-mic options, so you can blend the samples so they sound really authentic and real. We went into big studios, recorded with a bunch of expensive stuff, and just tried to make them sound like sounds you’d want to use in a song. Stuff you don’t have to burn four plug-ins on and chain a reverb to to get it to sound musical.

A lot of the stuff I made so you could just drop it in. Check it out. If you’re a person that uses a lot of this stuff, we’ve got bundles, all kinds of things.

Like a lot of loops, a lot of samples. It’s not a crappy free pack, but we send out — we do like, flash sales once a month. We’ll make everything half off, and everything is priced — I just wanted to make it super affordable for the average producer starting out. Everything is like, $30 for these packs.

So super affordable. Check it out. That’s the most sales you’re going to hear from me on that, because I hate doing this stuff, but I just thought I’d mention it. Other thing, new site, mixingtutorials.co. This is going to be like, the new premium tutorial thing. A lot of people have hit me up and they want to know when new tutorials are going to come out.

There’s one — you can preview the song here. It’s coming soon. These things are going to be super affordable as well. Probably around the $30 mark. Everything is like, 2+ hours long. Straight down, you get the stems, you get me showing you — I basically mix it top to bottom. You get to watch me use everything I use.

Check it. So be watching for that. It’ll probably go live the next couple of weeks, and if you’re watching this in a couple of weeks, it’s probably now. So go check it out. I’ll have links below.

So thanks for watching. It’s been awhile. It’s been like, two months since I put a video out, so hopefully somebody still watches this channel.

There’s going to be more content coming. So anyways, thanks for watching, I’ll see you guys next time. Later.